IBook: Decimation and Resurrection

I have a 3 year old iBook that was running Tiger 10.4.1.1 fine for a while. But for the last couple of months, the ol' computer wasn't quite itself. There was constant program crashing and finder froze all the time. It was so bad that I couldn't right-click or I would see the never-ending rainbow pinwheel of death which would make me force quit. I tried to free up as much space on my computer as possible, worried that it was a memory problem.

Last weekend, my brother who is a computer guru was in the area and agreed to help me with my computer problems. He has a Netbook with a huge hard drive so we transferred my files, wiped the entire computer, then he did some computer mojo like verifying the hard drive and writing 0's to the drive or something. Then he tried to install Snow Leopard since my version of Tiger has been notoriously wonky for years. The installation didn't work so, we had to load my computer with the old Tiger. Then that didn't even work. Not a single application could open. This entire process took two days and turned my computer into an expensive paperweight.

I finally took it to the Apple Store on Tuesday. I gotta say, I was really impressed with the customer service! Fact #1 - you can't go from Tiger to Snow Leopard. You need to go Tiger, Leopard, and then Snow Leopard. Fact #2 - my computer needed its entire hard drive and battery to be replaced. Fact #3 - the repairs cost me NOTHING!

It's so funny how computer dependent I am. The three days without my computer lead to some creative entertainment ideas. I wasn't completely disconnected/unwired. I had my cell phone, Wii, and Nintendo DSi. Composing emails on any of those wasn't an option but I was at least in the loop!

I got my computer back Thursday and it was glorious. Then my brother came by Friday, upgraded my OS and transferred all my files over. Guess what? The replaced hard drive actually doubled the capacity of my computer! I didn't notice but my brother pointed it out. Things are so smooth now and Snow Leopard is pretty nifty. My brother also transferred some MST3K movies so I have Hercules and Gamera to keep my entertained on my reborn iBook!